Dracula in Love

Ah, so you do remember.

My heart palpitated wildly, but I was not afraid. Something familiar about him prevented me from fearing him, though I had witnessed how dangerous he could be on the banks of the Thames when he had thrashed my attacker.

“Yes, yes, I remember,” I said. I would have said anything to keep his hand on me, to wallow in the wild energy he brought to my body, and to stare into the infinite violet blue of his eyes. Though I said nothing else, every nerve in my body begged him to keep touching me.

What is your desire?

I did not have the audacity to say the words aloud, but this being knew me and knew my thoughts. Our eyes were locked, and our minds were linked. I felt connected to him in a way that I had not known with another person. We were not one, but we were in harmony, as if we were both parts of the same symphony. With eerie slowness, his finger moved down my neck to the breastbone and across my chest until it reached my nipple. Then something extraordinary happened. He held it there, barely moving but sending a wild sensation through my breast that resonated in every curve and turn of me. My body was like a musical instrument that only he knew how to play. I tried to breathe while he moved at the same deliberate pace to the other breast, all the while staring into my eyes. I was electrified, fierce currents dancing through my veins. I gasped for breath, which only heightened my arousal. I had no idea how long I lingered in this blissful place. It might have been minutes or hours, but I rode the wave of it, letting it wash me through with excitement.

You are mine again, Mina. I have waited for you and watched over you since you were a little girl. Do you remember those times?

He stopped touching me. He looked into my eyes, waiting for me to answer. But my thoughts took another direction. Here was the phantom that had been luring me out into the night since I was a child. Could it be that he was responsible for my father’s disdain and my mother’s rejection? Excitement slowly turned to anger. As much as I did not want to leave the blissful place, I could not help myself, and he read my thoughts.

I came to you to help you, Mina. You were in danger. You needed me.

I began shrieking at him. “Yes, I remember everything. I am Mina Murray, whose parents sent her away from home because she was a strange and frightening child. I have made my own way to a good life, a respectable life, and a life over which I have control. I am a teacher at a school for girls, and I am engaged to be married to a man who loves me.”

I knew that I was sabotaging my own pleasure and perhaps so much more by rebelling against him and whatever memories he wanted me to have. I knew I was fighting against the very ecstasy he evoked from my body. But just as I could not earlier resist submitting to him, I could not combat the hostility I felt now. He was asking me to remember the very things I had spent my life trying to forget.

Do you want me to go, Mina?

“Yes, go!” I cried aloud. “Leave me in peace before you wreck my life again.” I curled up like a fetus and began to cry. Soon, my body was racked with sobs and grief. I cried for a long time, until every tear was wrung from my eyes. Cold began to seep in again through my clothes. I uncurled myself and opened my eyes. My mysterious stranger was gone, and I was lying on the grass inside the stark ruin of the abbey in my nightdress, looking up at the stars.

I climbed through the empty window of the abbey and walked to the churchyard, where low lamplight flickered on the headstones. A cemetery at night may frighten some, but after my experience this evening, the familiarity of the place comforted me. I paused at the grave of a child, resting my hand on the wing of an angel so that I could wipe off the grit that was irritating the bottoms of my feet, when I saw two figures on the bench where the old whaler and I sat by day looking out over the sea. An unmistakably familiar wavy blond mane cascaded over the back of the bench, while a man’s form loomed over her, his face buried in her neck.

I had wandered into this scene involuntarily and should have run away as quickly as possible, but I was riveted by the sight of his mouth consuming her neck, her cheeks, her shoulders, sliding luxuriously back up to her ear and lingering there. He opened her shirt, exposing her bosom, and lifted one breast out of her corset. Then he picked her up and put her on his lap so that she straddled him, and I watched them in profile as he took her breast into his mouth, licking and biting her nipple. I was close enough to see his slick tongue lapping at her, and my own lust, so recently aroused, began to stir. The feeling was so vivid that I could imagine that it was not Lucy on that bench but me, with Morris Quince’s well-formed lips on my nipple and his huge powerful hands all over me. I stood still, relishing the feeling, when he looked up and saw me. His shoulders dropped, and he said something to Lucy, whose head jerked around.

“Mina!” Her voice was full of admonition. She jumped off Morris’s lap and stood up, taking big strides over to me. Her hands made two fists, which swung back and forth like a toy soldier’s. “Why are you following me?”

Her blouse was open, and I stared at the white skin of her breasts, which were still of considerable size considering her weight loss. The bruiselike marks I had seen earlier were more plentiful now and deeper in color.

“I am n-not following you,” I stammered. The cold night air, the strange events, and the shock of seeing Lucy, caught up with me. “I-I don’t know how I got here. I was walking in my sleep again.”

“Mina?” Morris was taking off his linen jacket and putting it over my shoulders. I am sure he was embarrassed to see me in my transparent nightdress. “You are all wet and you have no shoes! We must get you indoors.”

Everyone looked at my bare feet, which were stark white. My toes grabbed at the ground as if I were trying to hold myself to the earth.

“I cannot allow a lady to walk barefoot,” Morris said, looking around as if a pair of shoes would miraculously pop out from one of the graves. He looked helplessly at Lucy, waiting for her to suggest something. “I will carry her,” he said.

Lucy’s impatient expression said that she did not sanction the idea. “What would happen if we are seen, with you making such a spectacle?”

“I can walk in bare feet. I have done it many times,” I said. I wanted to disappear into the ether just as my phantom had done.

“But you look ill, Miss Mina. Your teeth are chattering. You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.” Morris’s eyebrows were squeezed tightly together, forming one long hedge across his strong brow.

“I-I have bad dreams,” I said, torn between taking comfort in his concern and Lucy’s annoyance at having been interrupted. Morris Quince’s kindness felt like a rope thrown to save me from drowning, but Lucy was not allowing me to hold on to it.

“We had better just go,” Lucy said. She nodded her head at the jacket around my shoulders. “You can’t take that with you.”

“But she is half naked and has had a shock.”

“My mother will see it,” Lucy said with finality, and I took the jacket off and handed it back to Morris. “I’ll give her my shawl.” She untied the shawl, which she’d looped around her waist, and draped it on my shoulders. “We must part ways here,” she said to him, leaving him looking forlorn as he watched us walk away.

Lucy was silent for a while. She put her arm around me and pulled me close to her. “My, you are cold, Mina.” I snuggled closer to her, slipping my arm around her. I could feel the top of her hip bone jutting through her skirt. Despite her thinness, her body gave off immense heat.

“You are playing a very dangerous game, Lucy,” I said. “Half the town is probably still awake, what with the shipwreck.”

“He was walking me home when we decided to go to the churchyard to look out over the view. We had no intention of carrying on like that out in the open, Mina, but we are so much in love.”

The sky was mottled with shifting gray clouds that parted, revealing one bright, shining star. We walked for a few blocks, and when we turned the corner, Lucy stopped dead, her hand tightening around my shoulder, holding me back.

“I’m freezing-” I said, but Lucy interrupted me, pointing up the hill to the rooms. Fiery yellow light blazed in the bank of windows lining the two parlors, as if Mrs. Westenra was hosting a party in the middle of the night.

“She’s found me out!” Lucy wrapped her arms around her stomach as if her entrails were about to fall out. She bent over, gasping for air. I thought she might vomit on the pavement. “I cannot go in there,” she said.

“The lights may be on because your mother took ill,” I offered. That was the first thought that came to my